Rupert Friend

After inhaling a near-fatal amount of sarin gas and subsequently fighting for his life at the tail end of Homeland’s fifth season, it seems as if Peter Quinn can’t catch a break, and the same can be said for the actor who’s played the CIA operative on the show since 2012.

On Saturday, Rupert Friend arrived at Showtime’s pre-Emmys party on crutches. The actor was injured as he filmed the first and second episodes of the series’ sixth season, the New York City-based production of which EW can confirm has now been delayed as a result.

Homeland is still months away from returning, but Wednesday night at a For Your Consideration Emmy panel for the show, creator and showrunner Alex Gansa started to be reveal more details about the upcoming season.

Despite the eerily prescient plots that spanned the season (and the crucial discussions that followed), and despite the immense debates over surveillance and Snowden and Syria that went unanswered, the riveting fifth season of Homeland ended on a small, poignant moment with Carrie standing over a comatose Quinn.

Has Allison ever been more infuriating and impressive at the same time? Bibi and his men might be the ones carrying out the lethal attack on Berlin, but it’s Allison who becomes the most threatening obstacle to the BND and CIA’s efforts to stop the terrorist cell. And there are two bodies to prove it.

Like Carrie and Saul, the CIA and BND don’t always see eye to eye. But when they do, they can pull off some spectacular spy work. Case in point: Tonight’s cat-and-mouse game with Allison had Saul carrying out a middle-of-the-night bugging of Allison’s purse and cell phone, Astrid attempting a last-ditch push, and Carrie — the Drone Queen herself — using the BND’s sophisticated surveillance to follow Allison’s flight from Berlin.

This was the episode we’d been waiting for — at least, those of us invested in Allison’s history — and it delivered. Allison may have seemed like a cold-blooded killer in the moments we discovered she was a double agent, but clearly, she’s not heartless; she’s simply ambitious. She also knows she’s trapped, and that one day Carrie will somehow find out the truth.

If there’s one thing we learned tonight — other than the fact that Otto Düring’s super-secure WiFi password is “Pope Francis” — is that this season is not about hacktivism or the post-Snowden era, it’s not about ISIS and its terrifying impact on the Western world, and it’s not even about the slowly healing rift between Carrie and Saul.

What could possibly be in these MacGuffins documents?! They’ve fractured the CIA’s Dar Adal/Saul backbone, sent Carrie on a tailspin, and, worst of all, they’re killing Quinn, all because the Russians don’t want them to be read. These documents must be stopped.

A Cold War is brewing between Saul and Dar Adal, and it’s all Allison’s fault. The woman we met early in the season begging to keep her job showed just how ruthless she could be tonight by pushing the two CIA men just enough to create conflict between them.